“Can I play on your computer?”
“No. Talking.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw her toss her head to the side like she did when she was at the end of her patience. That wasn’t Lena, or her mother Faith. She certainly didn’t get it from her father. That was all Mercy.
Finally, she lay back and, after a few moments, he heard her breathing slow along with her heartbeat.
Then he turned his head and watched.
Scythe stood in front of him and when that made no difference, he bent down until his face was inches from his face.
“Ed. What’s going on?”
Mercy stirred and her hand traveled on its own from her stomach to her neck. Scythe watched his younger self follow the movement, and then look up at her face, just as he had done many years ago.
“Edillian. Talk to me.”
Scythe went back to reading his book, and no amount of yelling or standing in his way had any impact on him. The ghost tried everything he could think of to interrupt the memory, but he was powerless. Finally he went and sat on the floor by Mercy’s bed. He looked up later when Scythe checked the time and said, “Mercy.”
She twitched slightly and turned onto her side, reaching around and pulling the pillow in to cradle her head.
“Mercy,” he said louder.
His strong voice startled her and her eyes flew open. “Hm?”
“Take a drink and then you can go back to sleep.”
“Okay. Anything you say, boss.”
He went back to his book, but was only half attentive. He waited, like she did, after she sipped from the cup to see if her stomach could take it. When it looked like it was going to be fine this time, he tried to give his attention to the material, but she interrupted him with an unexpected question.
“Scythe, did you lie earlier?”
“What?” Lie? He couldn’t think of anything that he said that was untruthful...
“Did you lie when you said, ‘You’re welcome, Mercy'?” She was watching him closely, even though she could barely stay awake.
So that’s what she meant. Was she welcome to his help? Or was it just a polite but meaningless response?
He sighed and told the truth, “No, I didn’t lie.” He had to help her. She was Ian’s Mercy.
“That’s funny, because I don’t feel welcome.” She looked like she was going to go back to sleep then, but she had one more thing to say first. “If you’re not lying with your words...then...then you’re lying with your face.”
He didn’t answer, and within a minute she was resting deeply again.
He didn’t think that counted as lying. She was welcome to his help, but she wasn’t welcome here. She had caused so much disruption and had endangered herself and others with her choices, and he knew that the best thing was for her to return home immediately. That was his goal.
What was hers?
What did she think? That he would be thrilled to see her and let her run up and hug him like she used to? Well, this wasn’t her home, and...he wasn’t that kid anymore. He lowered his eyes to the book in front of him and gave himself over to easier matters.
Scythe sat on the floor and leaned his head on his knees. There was nothing he could do but wait. His attention was caught by the music above him. The song had a strong rhythm that pulled on Scythe and carried him along with it, but it was mechanical, like a tin toy that was wound up and just played and played but had no soul. His thoughts lingered on the melody that had pervaded this dream he was in, this prison, since he first arrived.
He lifted his head, no...actually, it had started before, hadn’t it?
Something twisted in his head, and then it was gone, the thing he was trying to figure out. It was some kind of puzzle, but he couldn’t remember what the pieces were…
He sighed and put his head down again. So tired.
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“No!!” she yelled, trying to push her voice through the ceiling. She stared at it, but it didn’t crumble, it melted into clouds that stretched across the sky over a busy road...
Another one was rising, and the last one wasn’t even done with her yet. She could still see the water splashing up against the side of the tub, still feel the self loathing of the man who had submerged himself, trying to escape, to find a way out for himself since he couldn’t do a thing about their troubles…
The water above him was pulled thin and flat and reflected the sky, and when she looked up she saw the road above her. Then everything twisted and the hot pavement was under her feet and she was leaning over the engine that was steaming and making choking noises. Piece of junk car. On the other side of the hood, someone yelled, “Almost done?” The engine got hotter. She took off her hat, wiped her forehead and replaced it. Then the person was hanging out of the car, one hand on an open door, one leg still inside. “Almost done?” Red hot metal. Why was it so hot out? Now he was standing next to her, leaning over the engine, peering at the problem without seeing a damn thing. “Almost done?” She gripped the hood and pulled it down with all her might. Problem solved...
Everywhere. Everywhere. Above her, behind her, in front, in the air she breathed, crawling inside of her. Everywhere.
An overload of power. Who were these people letting their power crawl all over her? And Mercy, who had always reached out to hold others, to hug them, to touch them, to share herself with them, felt for the first time how closely her own power mirrored her nature. She saw what her power did when she wasn’t paying attention. She had never noticed it before, because she had never been here before, in hell.
Stripped of her body, her mind and her control, she was a slave to it. Somewhen, she had tried to stop her ability, reversing the flow like she had been doing at the university, but that had only worked for a handful of times. Something they had given her was keeping her from being able to act, wrapping her in chains that she had no means to remove. Then, each vision had taken its toll, in pain and pressure, and left her weaker than before, until she had nothing left to draw on. Without hesitation, it had rolled over her and now she whirled in the torrent.
And in the depths of the storm, where nothing existed but herself and her power, she finally perceived the nature of her own abilities. She could see the largest body of it swirling around her, as well as the hundreds of flailing tentacles that stretched beyond it and out into the world.
Her power, akin to her instincts, reached out and followed every little bit of power that strayed from someone else and found its way to her. It would even chase down the scent of power. It ran along that wisp to the source and there it hovered until they or she moved out of reach.
Mercy had trained herself diligently in recent years to focus until her ribbons of power could reach for blocks if she wanted them to, not knowing that it also increased the range of the curious, subconscious tendrils. The building she had been brought to had nearly a hundred people with some gift easily within her reach, and her power had found them all.
Her power was just like her: it loved to be connected to people. She loved to coax a smile out of people, to engage them, and it loved to pull on their power ever so lightly, to taste it, to see what flavor they were. If that were all it did, she would have been fine, but her mother’s gift didn’t just smell; it was a gift of sight and sometimes when it pulled on the other person’s power, she could see where the power had been. Sometimes, she could see where it was, and every now and then, if the power was caught in a strong wind, she could see where it was going.
If she had had any strength at all, she would have pulled it back, pulled herself away from them. But her strength was gone, and her power, fueled by dozens of wells around her, raged on.
The visions began to overlap completely, and she began to see things in multiple people at the same time.
Running in the hall, and turning the corner to find the door broken open...sweeping up the largest chunks, gonna have to get the mop...swinging back and forth, arms out straight, tipping her head back fo
r a big hand gripping onto the door and shaking it so hard it was coming home late again, but this time it was worth it was empty again, as usual gonna have to get to the markepulling her face down to his for a long kissipping the channel but nothing good was on tonife dripping with his own blood this timeryone suspected the wrong person, he thought he was so clevto the bathroom because no one would see the...
She screamed again wordlessly, begging for help. Begging for it to end.
Soaking up power, but not using it for anything, her gift became bloated. With no mind to control it, no will to stop, it continued to follow its instincts. It was getting so strong, and the more powerful it got, the more it pulled, not because it wanted to, or needed to, but because it became too heavy to step lightly.
It was inevitable that her power would reach the point when it pulled too hard. It was merely a statistical probability that out of more than a hundred people, at least one would be ill or weak or damaged in some way. In fact, in a laboratory where they were at the beginning stages of experimentation, it was very likely that there would be at least one subject that they had gone a little too far with.
At Chromatic Technologies, there were six. The weakest was the first to go. Hovering over his well, her ability pulled just a little, but a little was all the boy had to give. When her power grew, the minimum amount it pulled jumped too, and sucked him dry. The part of him that he needed, his essential self, came loose and in a small examination room across the building, for no particular reason, a boy of fifteen began to convulse.
The nurse and laboratory scientists who were studying his group scurried around trying to identify the cause, but they couldn’t do anything for him.
Mixed in with her visions was a new thing to see: every thought he had, the agonizing pain of the seizure and of the separation, the fear, confusion and panic. Mercy lived through the whole thing for the entire time that he suffered until his death cut it off.
Mercy writhed, then, in a horror she had not imagined she would ever experience: the murder of an innocent boy. Then the second began to fail. In the vortex where she spun at the center of her mind, she started screaming and didn’t stop.
-----------
Tiburon looked at the screen avidly. This little project was working out so well he could hardly contain himself. In the last few days, he had been bursting with new and inventive ideas of how to best utilize Scythe’s amazing skills. He had already made thousands with the few people he’d already brought in, as well as solidified his position in two of the four committees he served on. He chuckled. Now the committees served him.
He leaned forward and listened to the voices that were being fed to them through the video feed.
“And what is the password?” Scythe asked. After a slight pause, “Say it.”
“RR148DF8,” the man said.
“Check it,” Tiburon said to the assistant that was working at a display right next to him.
“Yes, sir,” he said, and typed it in. “It’s good. What should I access?”
“Download it all.”
“What else?” Scythe asked.
“That’s it,” Tiburon answered, activating the microphone on the desk. “Clean him up.”
He watched Scythe take a deep breath and then go very still. Then the man in front of him began to whimper. After a while, he’d get quiet and at the end, he would become dizzy. When he fell over, a click of the mouse would reactivate the suit that incapacitated Scythe’s abilities and they would go in and take their man out.
The cleaning had been the only issue that Scythe and Tiburon had disagreed on since he had stood in front of Scythe and held up the Scere data technician’s picture. It had taken all of thirty minutes with his network of contacts to find out that the tech who had worked so diligently on his defense team years ago was one who had been assigned to him multiple times over the years. So, he had taken a chance that she might be someone valuable to the halfblood and two seconds after he had pulled out the picture, Tiburon knew that he had the halfblood locked in. And...he smiled just thinking about it...looking across the top of the photo, Tiburon could see that Scythe knew it, too.
He had been all cooperation since then, with the exception of the clean ups. For some reason, his favorite toy didn’t feel comfortable doing more than looking. However, Tiburon remembered the gifts of the prize he had lost years earlier, and he suspected that Scythe would be able to do similar work. So he had told Scythe to clear their memories of the interviews.
“No,” Scythe had said. “I’ll read, but that’s it.”
Tiburon had grinned. Nothing pleased him more than to be challenged by a strong man like Scythe. It gave him the biggest rush, because he knew...he knew...he was going to get it how he wanted it and when they fought, it made the win so much more exhilarating.
It was twice as exciting when his pet started off by saying, “No,” as if it were final, as if he were the master and not the dog. He loved to get the newspaper out and smack a big strong dog on the nose, or muzzle him, whatever it took. Then he loved to make him bow his head, and sit like a good boy.
If he had had more time, he would have argued a bit, just to play with him, but that day happened to be very busy so Tiburon had gone straight for the throat. “If we can’t clear them, I’ll have to eliminate them after you read them.”
Tiburon waited, hoping that it wasn’t over, hoping that he’d fight the bit. He had a plan for that, of course. It was something very compelling, perfect for muzzling the compassionate man Scythe had shown himself to be when the woman who had brutally tortured him was killed.
But, unfortunately, Scythe had seen his determination and had taken the smarter route.
Such a good dog.
Chapter 25
Reave said, “My orders about her are specific. She is to remain with the unit until the objectives are met.”
Scythe didn’t bother arguing with him. This part of the conference was a formality anyway. He and Ian had been given clearance to follow a lead on one of the core members of the terrorist unit; all that was left to do was pick the team, but they were having trouble agreeing on one point.
Reave knew that there was no way that Ian or Scythe was going to permit Mercy to stay behind without them. Ian had only just been reunited with his daughter, so he was not going to leave her side, and Scythe didn’t feel comfortable leaving them behind. They, like the rest of their family, were identified as powered, or in Mercy’s case, potentially powered. Any powered Humans were sought after by groups who hoped to gain from the use of them. One of the groups was the Scere, the organization Reave and Scythe worked for. So they stood and argued, but all three already knew how it was going to turn out.
Ian said, “We will still be part of the unit, Captain, even if we are not here. This is merely a…”
Scythe felt something in the back of his head fluctuate. Power, he knew instinctively. He looked over at Ian, but the man was still talking animatedly to Reave.
It was small, though, so small that it made him think of the Humans he had run into over the years who had powers but didn’t know it. People like that went about their lives not understanding why strange things would happen to them. Since Humans were so good at manipulating their environment from the inside of their heads, they could shrug off the little inexplicable incidents that their untamed powers caused; they chalked it up to coincidence and went on with their well constructed lives.
Scythe could see it, even feel it in them, because he was very sensitive to power in others. He would see a little wavy ball, a thin coat of white power that covered them, or a faint shimmer around one particular part of the body, like the hands or the legs.
That’s what this felt like, a shimmer. He reached out, sending a wave of his energy in the direction he thought it was coming from. He wasn’t very good at projecting power out of his body like that, so it was a little feeble.
Then the shimmer bubbled up into something bigger.
“I’ll be right bac
k,” he said and left the room. Behind him, there was stunned silence and then Ian’s step.
They were heading toward the courtyard, which was a strange place for someone hiding their power to be using it openly; it should have been packed with nighttime socializing.
“What is it?” Ian asked from behind him.
“Can you feel anything, Ian? A power buildup?”
“Power? Hmm. Yeah, there is something, now that you mention it, but it’s light.”
It wasn’t that light...it didn’t feel light to him. No...there was something about the quality of it that made him think it was…
It expanded.
...stronger.
Shit. He began to jog. Could it be their ghost man, sneaking in under their noses? Was he there right now, messing with someone’s memories? If it were true, he was sorely underestimating Scythe and Ian’s sensitivity…
Scythe continued to push his power ahead of himself and finally found it. It was not as strong as he thought, but still…
The power fluctuated and Scythe thought, This is it, he’s making his move. We’ll nab him right here.
Then the unknown power moved, crashing into another. He started running full out before he even registered the name.
Mercy!
“Hey!” he heard behind him, a tiny speck of sound from a world suddenly far away from him.
His own world had shrunk down to three people.
He charged into the courtyard, flying right through groups of people he would have normally gone politely around, not seeing their faces, just the amount of space they took up in the narrow lane that he was swimming in to get from where he was to where he was going to be.
He didn’t slow down when he got to the door. He didn’t evaluate how much force the situation required. He swept in at his top speed, strangled the foreign power with his own, hooked the man with his hands, and didn’t stop moving until his enemy hit the wall.
The breath exploded out of the Human and Scythe knew that he had slammed him into the wall with enough force to give him serious bruises and maybe a slight concussion. Not nearly enough damage.
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